Writings made by visible full-form spirit
materializations
through the mediumship of William W. Aber

EVOLUTIONARY IMMORTALITY TRIUMPHING AS THE
MISSING LINK IN EVOLUTION

OPEN LETTER

PART II
Written by the Spirit,
PROF. MICHAEL FARADAY
as
AMANUENSIS
for
THE STAR CIRCLE BAND OF SPIRITS

The theorist that teaches that life originated in the germ, should
remember that, a little further analysis shows the germ is a compound form, the
same as any one of the stages that life passes through in its pathway to a more
perfect expression.

The stickler for the cell as the primitive source of life, should be
aware that, the cell is a result of chemical forces that have not yet arrived at
the germ stage of life form; and that, every analysis of form you make only
throws a little further back into the realm of chemical forces, the true source
of life itself.

Evidently it is not in form that the life principle is to be found in its
primitive state, and you shall have to look in some other direction for evidence
of its true nature.

THE GOD IDEA

You have seen that, all of the thinkers of the past, to formulate a
theory of the source of life, end in abstraction. The logic they use is: God
is the source of life, and God made the world and all in it by fiat, or decree
of his own free will. This is only the confession of ignorance and
inability to produce evidence concerning the subject; and we mention this, here,
to show how unable the untrained intellect is to discern any relation of force
beyond the scope of the physical senses.

To discern the evidence that belongs to the realm of form beyond the
physical senses requires a keen mental training, and it is in the mental realm
that you shall have to seek it : For, as soon as it comes to the sphere of
physical sense, although it appears to be more positive, yet really, it is not
so for physical life and physical senses are lower in the scale of atomic
results, and deductions that depend upon them only, are apt to be of inferior
value, although not without interest that makes them worthy of consideration.

But, even in their province, they give you much evidence that is
positive as far as it goes, and would, if better understood, go far toward
clearing up the mystery that surrounds physical form. In all the reproductive
functions of life, you find that, the elements cling to their primitive
processes, no matter how high the organism may grade in the scale.

There is the principle of cozoic formation in the spermatozoa of the
male which is the first evolution of electric life. It is the first chemical
combination of elements in the living structure that has the proper temperature
and interaction of elements by which the primitive cell was formed. If placed in a
corresponding environment, it goes steadily forward through all the previous
stages, until it has perfected its form and becomes a miniature reproduction of
its parent structure.

In doing this, it thus unconsciously followed the line of forces and
chemical elements of the parent organism whereby the organism came into being
from its parent, and so on backward for generations and ages ; but, in this
line, there are some deflections that are quite marked. There is a period when
the forming organism is bisexual, or, rather, when it can become either sex,
carrying it back to the period when organisms were bisexual ; but in order that
it should perfect the power of sex to a higher degree or rather, when the
inherent powers of the elements were surging into it to raise it to a higher
plane.

Sex had to differentiate, and one became the power to preserve the
energy, while the other became the environment to perfect the form. In this
there was no miracle wrought, for the very fact that some organisms responded
more to the waves of electric power in the planet at times than at others, would
tend to make them more positive, while others, under less powerful currents,
would become receptive to the influence of the stronger organisms and thus
sexual functions became distinct in each. Now you have organic life responding
to the wave-motion of the elements in the highest grades of atomic and molecular
activity ; but with the difference of rates, made a basis determining which
shall be the positive and negative expression in the form; and, between them,
further evolution of form from the elements in this stage of formative action,
according to the original principle of obtaining form from chemical balance.

Another strong witness to the birth of organic form under the
conditions of planetary darkness, is the necessity that exists, even at this
age, for the same condition, in almost all departments of the higher types, of
darkness during the formative processes of embryotic life.

Perhaps the best evidence that can be given, is the existence of the
mental power that, in the short space of thirty or fifty years, is able, from
the germ cell of embryotic life to expand to the breadth and vigor of gigantic intellectual power that governs
the world of material forces with perfect ease, and bids them respond to its
wishes, yet, you see this, every day, in the teeming world of inventive and
mechanical ingenuity.

Yet, even these exhibits of mental evolution may be said to only
reflect upon the mental plane the grand growth of vegetable and animal organisms
that once dwelt upon the earth as the best results of the forces in the planet
at that stage of planetary development.

We say that the law of evidence in this age of mental growth, is not
questionable there, but we know that, in all the previous ages of mental
evolution there is no evidence that the present status was ever allowed by the
race, although there are still remaining traces of a highly developed
civilization in various quarters of the globe.

You can do, in this age, all that has been done in the past, with
additional powers of control of natural forces that were unknown in the past ;
but, this increase of mentality which is so striking an evidence of evolution
upon the plane of the mind, is overlooked, almost entirely, by the advocates of
special creation, who suppose that, mentality itself, is an evidence of the
exercise of special creative power. The truer inference would be to examine if
the increase of the mental power of the race is not presumptive, if not
conclusive evidence of the transferral of the law of evolutionary growth to the
plane of mind ; and if, by that method the world could not be read as an open
book by the enlightened student of nature's laws. Certain it is that, the more
highly the mental insight is developed the less do the evidences of any special
creative processes appear to be truthful, or, in any degree, reliable.

All that they have as a basis, or ever had, is the dictum of a class of
thinkers that never had any special qualification as judges of the subject. They
wrote as they surmised, and that is all the world has ever had from that source
as evidence. They knew little, but claimed much, and the world accepted them on
the strength of their claims ; but, evidence of the truth of their claims was
beyond the province of any one to bestow.

The forming worlds in space, that, at the present time, belong to the
nebulous masses of matter, are certainly worthy of study and consideration. The
principles of chemical balance whereby the elements in space are able to assume
form are surely of as much value as the word of a prophet crying in the
wilderness of ignorance.

The inherent energy of the elements in mass, is as good a source of
vital power, as a Hypothetical Individual that neither can be discussed nor
apprehended by any of His so-called exponents.

The evidence the world of thought seeks, must be in accord with the
principles that produce the results that are evidence of the existence of the
powers, and these principles are, certainly, demonstrated in the province of
chemical forces, if nowhere else.

Consequently, it is here, that you are justified in seeking the evidence,
rather than elsewhere. To these laws we refer as evidence of the causative power
that produces the results in the world of physical forces.

To their study you look for the only revelation that is worthy of the
name, for a solution of the problems of sentient, as well as invisible beings.
In them you expect to find the true source of wonder working power that builds
planets from the inchoate elements and peoples them with myriad hosts of life
that reflect all degrees of animate and intelligent expression of power. Outside
of them you do not expect any explanation of the source of planetary life that
will be worthy of acceptance as being in accord with the truth or hardly
approximating its real nature. That type of thought has had its time, upon the
earth, and has only resulted in producing confusion and darkness to the mental
world, thereby retarding the progress of the intellectual development of the
race, by persistently refusing to consider the evidence that Nature gives for
the enlightenment of all her children.

Now we come to the liberation and reconstruction of the elements into
the different types of form;—but, rather, a steady modification of types and
evolution of power that marks the status of the world at present. There are
those in your world that claim to know how to answer these questions, but their
answers differ widely in the principles of causation, and the thinker is forced
to regard them as premature in their claims, or, unreliable in their statements.
The most that we can say of them is that, their ability is not equal to their zeal, and they must
be passed to one side as incompetent to deal with the question. Another class,
who are interested in the subject, do not claim so much but, really, do give
more light as they follow more closely upon the pathway of Natural Revelation,
than, in the direction of the old theories ; but even they fall short of
forming a full exposition of their convictions : For they hold a little in
reserve that binds them to the self-constituted exponents of Creative Power.

This class are uncertain of the principles, because all along the
pathway of evolutionary life, certain way-marks are supposed to be wanting, and
so they wait until the missing links are restored, and the claim of external
evidence is completed, ere they commit themselves to the complete endorsement of
the new theory of life. It is to this class of exponents that the great mass of
minds look for their instruction in the lines of new thought, and who really
have to be the connecting links in the new evolution of mental power in
transition from the old idea. This is the law of evolution in all its bearings
upon the problem of human destiny, as well as the solution of the mysteries that
belong to the department of planetary forms. It furnishes explanations for all
the processes that form requires, and dispenses with the superstitious
expositions that imperfect mentality has imposed upon the world as the true
explanation of the action of creative intelligence.

There is, indeed, a period in the development of every tissue and every
living thing known to you, when there are actually no structural peculiarities
whatever—when the whole organism consists of transparent structureless,
semi-fluid living Bioplasm. When it would not be possible to distinguish the
growing moving matter which was to evolve the oak from that which was the germ
of a vertebrate animal. Nor can any difference be discerned between the bioplasm
matter of the lowest, simplest epithelial scale of man's organism and that from
which the nerve cells of his brain are to be evolved.

Neither by studying bioplasm under the microscope, nor by any kind of
physical or chemical investigation known, can you form any notion of the nature
of the substance which is to be formed by the bioplasm.

THE CHEMIST WHO OPERATES UPON MATTER IN
THIS SUBTLE WAY AND CARRIES OUT THIS LAW, IS LIFE

Now we are nearing the point where the spiritual analogy appears. It is
a very wonderful analogy, so wonderful that we almost hesitate to put it into
words. Yet Nature is reverent ; and it is her voice to which you listen. There
is another kind of life, of which, science, as yet, has taken little cognizance.
It obeys the same laws. It builds up an organism into its own form. It IS THE
SPIRITUAL LIFE. When man becomes a spiritual being the process is Natural.

Spiritualism is no disheveled mass of aspiration, prayer and faith.
There is no more mystery in Spiritualism, as to its processes, than in Biology.
There is much mystery in Biology. You know all about nothing of life yet,
nothing of development. There is the same mystery in the spiritual Life. Has it
ever occurred to you that Spiritualism is not only a philosophy, but that it
includes a science, pure and simple? To look in this direction for the
protoplasm of the spiritual life is consistent with all analogy.

The lowest, or mineral world, mainly supplies the material—and this is
true even for insectivorous species—for the vegetable kingdom. The vegetable
supplies the material for the animal. Then, in turn, the animal furnishes
material for the mental; and, lastly, the mental for the spiritual. Each member
of the series is complete only when the steps below it are complete;—the highest
demands all. You have discovered that, in the womb, the new creature is to be
born, fashioned out of the mental and moral parts, substance, or essence of the
natural man. The thing to be insisted upon is that, in the natural man this
mental and moral substance, or basis, must be spiritually developed.

When we look at this complex combination which we have predicated as
the basis of spiritual life, we do find something which gives it a qualification
for being the protoplasm of the spiritual life. The reason at least, not only
why this kind of life should be associated with this kind of protoplasm, but why
it should never be associated with other kinds which seem to resemble it—why,
for instance, the spiritual life should not be engrafted upon the intelligence
of a horse or the instinct of an ant.

The animal in all its parts is mobile, sensitive ; the highest animal,
man, is the most mobile, the most at leisure from routine, the most
impressionable, the most open to change.

And, when you reach the mind and soul this mobility is found in its most
developed form. Whether you regard its susceptibility to impressions, its
lightning-like response, even to influences the most impalpable and subtle, its
power of instantaneous adjustment; or, whether you regard the delicacy and
variety of its moods, or its vast powers of growth, you are forced to recognize,
in this, the most perfect capacity for change. The marvelous plasticity of mind,
contains at once, the possibility, and prophecy of its transformation.

The natural man is its basis, the spiritual man is its product; the life
itself is something different. This being made evident little remains here to be
added.

No man has ever seen life. It cannot be analyzed, or weighed, or traced
in its essential nature. You see no life in the first embryo in the oak, in
palm, or the bird. In the adult it escapes you. You cannot expect to see it, for
you are further removed from the coarser matter moving now among ethereal and
spiritual things. It is because it conforms to the law of the analogy that men,
not seeing it, have denied its being. Is it hopeless to point out that one of
the most recognizable characteristics of life is its unrecognizableness, and
that the very token of its spirituality lies in its being beyond the grossness
of your eyes? You do not pretend that science can define this life. It has no
definition to give—even of your own life, much less of this—the spiritual.
According to this doctrine, [of evolution,] life can only come from life.

What does any man consciously do, for instance, in the matter of
breathing? What part does he take in circulating the blood, in keeping up the
rhythm of the heart? What control has he over growth? What part, voluntarily,
does man take in secretion, in digestion, in the reflex actions? In fact, is he
not, after all, the veriest automaton,—every organ of his body given him, brain,
nerve, thought and sensation, will and conscience—all provided for him ready
made? And yet he turns upon his soul and refuses to recognize that himself ! Oh,
how preposterous and vain man is! You, who could not make a finger nail of your
body—then you think to fashion the wonderful, mysterious, subtle soul of yours after the ineffable Image. Could
science, in its most brilliant anticipations for the future of its highest
organism, ever have foreshadowed a development like this?

Now that this revelation is made, it surely recognizes it as the
missing point in Evolution, the climax to which all creation tends. It is a
pillar with marvelous carving, growing richer and finer toward the top, but
without a capital ; a pyramid, the vast base buried in the inorganic, towering
higher and higher, life above life, mind above mind; it is perfect in its
workmanship, more noble in its symmetry and yet, withal, so much the more
mysterious in its aspiration.

The most curious eye, following it upward sees nothing. The cloud has
covered it. Just what men wanted to see was hidden. This work of ages, begun by
Nature, had no apex. As the veil is lifted by these phenomena, it strikes men
dumb with wonder. Spirit life is the only life that ever will be completed.
Apart from the spirit, the life of man is a broken pillar, and the race of men
an unfinished pyramid. One by one, in sight of us all, all human ideals fall.
One by one, before the open grave, all human hopes dissolve.

Is not the botanist astonished when his microscope reveals the
architecture of sprat tissue in the stem of a plant? or the mineralogist who
beholds, for the first time, the chaos of beauty in the sliced specimen of some
common stone? So far as beauty goes, the organic world and the inorganic are
one. No fundamental distinction in science depends upon beauty. He wants an
answer in terms of chemistry : Are they organic or inorganic? or in terms of
biology : Are they living or dead? But when we tell him that the one is
living and the other dead, he is in possession of a characteristic and
fundamental scientific distinction. From this point of view, however much they
may possess in common of material substance and beauty, they are separated from
one another by a wide and unbridged gulf.

Thus classification of form structures depends upon the standpoint, and
we shall pronounce them like or unlike, related or unrelated, accordingly as we
judge them from this point of view. Here, for example, are two characters, pure
and elevated, adorned with conspicuous virtues, stirred by lofty impulses, and commanding a spontaneous admiration from all who look on them.
There is a deep distinction between the spiritualist and the not-a-spiritualist
as fundamental as that between the organic and the inorganic.

Examples of this are so numerous that if one were to proceed to proof,
he would have to cite almost the entire philosophy of the last three hundred
years. It may be well to state emphatically, that in proposing a new idea—or
rather, reviving the primitive one—in the spiritual sphere, we leave untouched
all of supreme value, in its own province, the test of morality. Morality is
certainly a test of religion.

The spiritual man is a mere unformed embryo, holden in his earthly
chrysalis case, while the natural man has the breeding and evolution of ages
represented in his character. What are the possibilities of this spiritual
organism? What is yet to emerge from this chrysalis case? The natural character
finds its limits within the organic sphere. All life (manifestation) begins at
the Amoeboid stage. Evolution is from the simple to the complex. A naturalist's
only serious difficulty is when he comes to deal with low or embryonic form. At
the bottom of animal senses, there are organisms of so doubtful a character that
it is equally impossible to distinguish them. We mention this merely to show the
difficulty of scientific arrangement, and not for analogy : For, the proper
analogy is not between the vegetable and animal forms, whether high or low ;
but, between the living and the dead.

These forces seem to be the controlling agents of all kinds of form, and you
must study them carefully and you will be astonished at the diversity of these
powers, as well as the inherent adaptability to bridge the supposed to be
impassable chasm that exists between the visible and invisible universe.

Even more than this : It is seen that these are the natural paths
whereby matter might be traced along the lines of all its exhibitions, and the
scientific world awoke to the fact that, beyond the realm of visible was (is?)
the true field of discovery, if the world would ever know the secrets of its own
existence : For it is here that the secrets are veiled from physical sight, and
the mental powers are the only means available to push discovery to its
ultimate; and nobly has the world of science advanced to ascertain if the world invisible would yield
up its secrets. It found no impassable barrier ; and it also found that, the
only obstacle which had ever existed was the ignorance and stupidity of the
undeveloped mind whose knowledge was limited by its lack of a more perfect
mental evolution.

Beyond the border lines of the visible, lie the boundless realms of the
radiant, or, invisible forces ; and, it is to our province that we now introduce
the reader as the place to seek for reason why planetary forms are essential to
the evolution of mentality of a new order. These forces, latent in the elements
themselves, must have fields in which they can express themselves upon a perfect
equilibrium of different planes.

The atom must move somewhere all the time, and the compounds of the
elements must furnish it with a range of different capacities of expression.
This enables the physical form to exist as a form or concretion of powers that
reflects the action of the atoms in the form upon some of their different planes
of expression. Coming into these relations in a form, they naturally correlate
with the elements in proximate relations, and a new form ensues; having, in
itself, a little different action from the others from which it springs. The
planet holds these powers subject to certain modifications of its own inherent
energy ; and, by the power of magnetic induction, keeps them in form long after
they have vanished from the visible realm, but they are not, as you might
suppose, dissipated in the universal ether. As sentient forms upon a higher
plane, they exist; but, were it not for the influences of the planet, they could
not exist as independent entities.

We have stated before that the office of a planet was to produce
these entities and without their production the life of a planet is abortive,
but from the fact that planets have their evolutionary processes, you need not
consider it at all doubtful that, at some period of their existence they have
their progeny of the sentient order.

You need not shrink from questioning the wisdom of the sentient hosts,
who, through long residence in the realm of radiant forces, must be familiar
with the principles by which worlds are constructed and minds evolved through
their environment. But, you should remember that the mental evolution of the
race, as yet, is so embryotic that it can hardly rise above the conviction that the
planet on which it finds expression is the most important world in existence.
Hence, it reasons that its creator must be the creator of all, the whole, and
governing mind of all.

Now the mind that governs and creates your planet is the supreme
Creator of all the worlds in space, or, otherwise, you certainly know that, the
statement that it is so, is pure assumption, and an evidence of the ignorant
mental status of the mind that makes or believes it: For the universal cosmos
must have an equal importance in the consideration of creative wisdom with any
individual planet, and to pronounce judgment in favor of one world to the
exclusion of others is premature, to say the least, and worthy only of the mind
biased by a defective education or the victim of craft and superstition.

Your planet is only one among many others in the same system. Turning
from this to the deductions of scientific study, you enter the realm of the
invisible, to explore its mysteries and discover its secrets.

It might be asked whether a complete and consistent theory of Evolution
does not really demand such a conception? Why should evolution stop with the
organic? It is surely obvious that the completement of Evolution is advolution,
and the inquiry : Whence has all this system of things come? is, after all,
of minor importance compared with the question whither does all this tend?
Science, as such, may have little to say on such a question. And it is perhaps
impossible, with such facilities as you now possess, to imagine Evolution with a
future as great as its past.

So stupendous is the development from the atom to the man that no point
can be fixed in the future, as distant from what man is now, as he is from the
atom. But it has been given to Spiritualism to disclose the lines of a future
Evolution. And, if science also professes to offer a future Evolution, not the
most sanguine Evolutionist will venture to contrast it, either as regards the
dignity of its methods, the magnificence of its aim, or the certainty of its
hopes, with the prospects of the spirit realm. That science has a prospect, of
some sort, to hold out to man is not denied. But its limits are already marked.

Spiritualism defines the highest conceivable future for mankind. It
satisfies the Law of Immortality. It guarantees the necessary conditions for
carrying on the organism successfully from stage to stage. It provides against
the tendency to degeneration. And, finally, instead of limiting the yearning hope of final perfection to the organism of a future age—an
age so remote the hope for thousands of years must still be hopeless—instead of inflicting this
cruelty on intelligences mature enough to know perfection and earnest enough to
wish it, Spiritualism puts the prize within immediate reach of man.

The attempt to incorporate the spiritual realm in the scheme of
Evolution, may be met by what seems at first sight, a fatal objection. So far
from the idea of a spiritual realm being in harmony with the doctrine of
Evolution, it may be said that, it is violently opposed to it. It announces a
new realm, starting off, suddenly, on a different plane, and in violation of the
primary principle of development. Instead of carrying the organs of Evolution
further on its own lines, Theology, at a given point interposes a sudden and
hopeless barrier—the barrier between the natural and the spiritual—and insists
that the evolutionary process must begin again at the beginning.

On the surface, the objection seems final, but it is only on the
surface. It arises from taking too narrow view of what Evolution is. It takes
Evolution of Biology for Evolution as a whole. Evolution begins, let us say,
with some primeval nebulous mass in which lay, potentially, all future worlds.
Under the evolutionary host, the amorphous cloud broke up, condensed, took
definite shape, and in the line of true development assumed a gradually
increasing complexity. Finally, there emerged the cooled and finished earth,
highly differentiated, so to speak, complete, and fully equipped.

What followed this ? Let it be well observed—a catastrophe ! Instead
of carrying the process further, the Evolution, if this is Evolution, abruptly
stops. A sudden and hopeless barrier between the inorganic and the organic
interposes and the process has to begin again, at the beginning, with the
creation of life. Here, then, is a barrier placed by science at the close of the
inorganic, similar to the barrier placed by Theology at the organic. Science has
used every effort to abolish this first barrier, but there it still stands,
challenging the attention of the modern world, and no consistent theory of
Evolution can fail to reckon with it.

Any objection, then, to this catastrophe, introduced by Christianity,
between the Natural and Spiritual Realms, applies with equal force against the
barrier which Science places between the inorganic and the organic. The presence
of life, in either case, is a fact, and a fact of exceptional significance. For
now the case stands thus: Evolution, in harmony with its own law : That progress
is from the simple to the complex, begins itself to pass towards the complex.

From the earliest dawn of its history, the elements of its being have
been in constant strife and turmoil. The inhabitants of its latter ages have
transferred the violence of the primitive stages to the plane of mental as well
as physical action, and worse bloodshed and agony have been the birthright of
its unfortunate children. Its history is not that of a wise effort to populate
the eternal realms with a race of intelligent and well developed spirits ; but,
rather, a breeding ground for the inception of life and the organization of the
elements the first relations of sentient form.

This is the law of Evolution in all its bearings upon the problems of
human destiny, as well as the solution of mysteries that belong to the
development of planetary forms. It furnishes explanations for all the processes
that form requires, and dispenses with the superstitious expositions that an
imperfect mentality has imposed upon the world as the true explanation of the
action of creative Intelligence.